So, for the most part I find people pretty reasonable. But a couple things happened lately that really grossed me out. The first thing was in the Portland airport on the way to meet my sister. I was in the restroom and I heard a girl yacking away to a friend while she was in the stall. I thought her friend must be in the stall next to her. But, not so. She was on her cell phone. THE ENTIRE TIME. Flushing noises galore and it didn't see to phase her, in fact I don't know that she even considered she was doing something weird. I just had to laugh.

Secondly, this week at the public library I was helping a woman find some books. She was talking to me and started picking at a hang nail. She then proceeded to chew on the hang nail. Then she asked if she could borrow my scissors. Yeah, you guessed it, she used them to start hacking away at her stray hangnail. After leaving all kinds of wet, skanky, skin on the counter, she thanked me, handed me the scissors, and left. She seemed nice, but how could you do that to a person who has just helped you????? Then to top that off, as we were closing I had to clean up a napkin with big chunks of gross, half eaten smelly food in it. The person couldn't be bothered to drop it in a trash can.

I know that I am guilty of having others clean up for me. I leave cloths in the dressing room. I don't always put items back where I found them in a store. I'm not perfect, and I don't expect others to be. But come on people, don't be disgusting, that's all I'm asking!

Well, I've been so busy with summer ending and school starting that I haven't blogged in awhile. School started officially on 8/20 and I finished decorating the library about a 1/2 hour before kids showed up. Whew! I decided on a fairy-tale theme and will post pictures when I have a second to take them, I think it turned out really cute.

I've spent the summer reading adult and YA novels, so now I need to get a little Juvenile Fiction under my belt. The kids at my school are voracious readers and I struggle to keep up with their little minds. My goal this year is to do more booklists and posters to give the kids suggestions on what to read. Kids can be so picky, they will tell me that they need a particular book, say a pink, princess book, and I'll find them the perfect one, they'll take one look at it and say Nope! They're like shy little fawns that I have to approach carefully and not look directly in the eye if I want to get them to take my advice.

Anyway, I'm working on fun projects and contests to do this year, to make a bit more effort that in previous years. I'm thinking about a cardboard haunted house contest, more details to follow...

GE Appliances suck, and so does their repair service!!!

So, we bought this fridge from Sears 2 years ago. We checked it out on Consumer Reports and it got a good rating. Also, CR recommended that you not purchase an extended warranty as it wasn't worth the money.

2 years go by and the fridge works great. The only problem is that at some point we quit being able to get out cubed ice and all the ice collected and froze up in the bin. We could still get crushed ice, so we let it go on for awhile because when calling for service you have to be home for at least 4 - 8 hours. Since J and I have 3 jobs between us, we decided to wait for summer. So last week I called the GE repair service. I could have gone with someone else, but I figured who better to fix the problem, no?

Monday a nice guy comes out, I tell him the problem, he puts in a part, says he won't charge me for it since it's so expensive, and instead charges me $200 for labor. He had dumped out all the ice in the sink, so I couldn't test it out until later in the day once there was ice again. Imagine my surprise when I realized that I still had the same problem. No cubed ice, by Tuesday it was all frozen again.

Called again, and on Thursday the same guy returned. I once again explained the problem. He said "When I came before you had no ice." I said no, that wasn't the problem, remember how you filled my entire sink with ice??? He shook his head as if dealing with a really stupid person and said, "You had no ice. If you had told me the problem originally I could have told you right away - you need a new Solanoid." What???? I was fit to be tied, and called their customer service number. Like yeah, I lied about the problem to begin with, I was really trying to trick him, I really wanted to spend another day and more money fixing this problem.

It took me 15 minutes to get through the massive line up of items to choose from on their call in service(none of which applied to me) before I got someone on the line. After explaining the situation and then holding for 5 more minutes, I was told that they wouldn't charge me for the part. I was reasonably happy with that as I didn't have another $60 to give them. The guy replaced the part, and I said thanks, although he was still looking at me like I was some kind of weird person that likes to trick repairmen.

Imagine my irritation when I went to get ice on Sunday and not a single cube came out. I checked the bin and there were 3 sorry cubes stuck together in the bottom of the bin. So, maybe the repair dude was a soothsayer, because now, indeed, I HAVE NO ICE.

I spent 30 - 40 minutes this afternoon with more customer service people only to be told that I would need to be home on Thursday from 8 - 5 waiting patiently for yet another service call. I have requested a new repairman, but that couldn't be guaranteed. The saga continues....

So, I attended mandatory "sensitivity training" today at the library. It was HORRIBLE! Evidently someone was rude to a disabled person so the entire city staff had to attend and hear stuff like "Is it okay to say "See you tomorrow" to a blind person?" Let me just repeat, HORRIBLE!!!!

Anyway, It did remind me that I deal with disabled people on a regular basis. I had a girl come up to the desk and she was so rude. She sat on the desk, spent the whole time leaning over my screen and keyboard, in my personal space, and being generally short, and rude. After she left a lady came up to me and said "Hi, that was my daughter, she has Asperger's Syndrome, how was she to deal with, could I help her be better?" Wow, I felt guilty for all the rude things I was thinking about her. I realized that there are definitely reasons that people act the way they do, and I shouldn't be so judgmental.

Anyway, I learned nothing at the training, but my on the job training has helped me to be more accepting of disabled and homeless people. People that I would have never interacted with had I not had this job. Something I am very grateful for!

Ian is in the white shirt, tan shorts, orange scarf - in the background group.